A. M. Taylor - Forget Me Not

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Annie Taylor 2018

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Annie Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008312916

Version: 2018-05-13

For Ruthie (big sister, best cheerleader, and all-round super woman)

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Keep Reading…

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

January 7, 2018

Ten years ago, the family and friends of Nora Altman woke up to find themselves living in a nightmare. Tomorrow marks the anniversary of her disappearance when the 17-year-old’s car was found abandoned by the side of Old Highway 51 on the road between Forest View, WI, and nearby Stokely in the early hours of January 8, 2008. The car was locked, with no sign of a struggle; the only indication that anything was wrong with the car was the empty tank of gas that had presumably halted the teen’s drive.

The case has long since gone cold, and the local police department have been criticized both by members of the community and Nora’s family for not acting quickly enough when she was first reported missing. But Chief of Waterstone Police Department Patrick Moody claims he hasn’t given up. “We’re always on the lookout for anything relating to Nora’s disappearance. This is the kind of case that defines your whole career, but its impact has been much more far-reaching than that. It’s affected the whole community and I feel the full weight of that responsibility daily. Even now.”

Three years after the teen first went missing, her father, Jonathan Altman, almost launched a civil suit against the Waterstone Police Department. “There are no hard feelings,” Moody said, “he was just doing everything he had to do to find out what happened to his daughter. As a father, I would have done the same.”

Chief Moody was planning on joining the family and close friends of Nora today to mark the ten-year anniversary of her disappearance. “We’ve done it almost every year since Nora went missing. It’s good to get together and remember her, and also to remind ourselves that there’s still work to do.”

For the family, though, the nightmare still goes on. “We’ll never have closure,” Nora’s younger sister Noelle said. Only 7 when Nora went missing, Noelle regrets not having had a big sister to grow up with and guide her along the way. “My brother Nate tries his hardest, but it’s not the same. Even though I know I barely really knew her, I still really miss her. I just know she would have been the best big sister.”

I was dreaming of the sheet of glass again.

I was carrying this huge plate of glass that was beginning to crack, tiny spider webs of distortion spreading fast, and as it did the pane shifted in my heavy arms and slipped from my grasp. I woke just as it should have been shattering into a million pieces on the floor below me. I carried that great big sheet of glass everywhere I went, my arms straining with the effort, my forehead shining with sweat, the glass itself slowly, slowly cracking as I shifted it slightly from hand to hand, arm to arm. It was exhausting and debilitating, cumbersome and controlling and, I thought, so, so obvious to everyone I met that I was struggling. People recognized the struggle of course, just as I knew they would, gave it a name, and either pushed it to the back of their minds or worried about it endlessly depending on who they were and what they were to me. They all made the same mistake, though: thinking that pane of glass made me weak. You try carrying something like that around with you wherever you go. You get tired, sure; but you also get strong.

There was nothing particularly special about waking up to that shattering glass. I’d done it a thousand times before and no doubt it would continue to haunt me after; it wasn’t a portent, or an omen, I didn’t have to write about it in my dream journal, or put a black mark in my diary so that in the years to come I’d be able to look back and say “ah yes, the dream. I should have known something terrible was going to happen.” Because there was no way anyone could have known.

Because when the worst has already happened, you don’t expect it to happen again.

But this story doesn’t start with a dream. What story ever does? No, this story starts with Nora.

Nora’s parents had chosen Sunday for the memorial because more people were available. The day was white and gray, the sky thick and heavy even though the snow didn’t come until nightfall. It had been the same on the day Nora disappeared but then that should have hardly come as a surprise. January has a way of making every day look and feel the same, the month lasting forever and then suddenly over. I don’t know why we gathered at the lake house rather than at the Altman home, although I was glad we weren’t huddled around the trees by the side of the road where her abandoned car had been found that morning, so many years ago. Too many impromptu vigils had happened there in the days and weeks following Nora’s disappearance for me to feel anything other than nausea when I drove past. At least the lake held some happy memories, long gone but still just about holding on. So, Nora’s dad, Jonathan, spoke, and then her older brother, Nate, did, and then we all just stood looking at the lake for a while, no one really knowing what to do, what we were expected to do. That’s something I’ve learned over the last ten years; no one ever tells you what to expect or what’s going to happen next because no one knows. You’re on your own.